Naruto: The Shorter Story [Team 7]
Title: “The Shorter Story”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura - together and alone. The final battle is on. [Team 7; SPOILERS up to Chapter 474]
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.
A/N: This is, uh… my reaction to the latest chapters. Probably. Or just a random surge of activity.
THE SHORTER STORY
To lose you is to never love again.
Institute feat. Gavin Rossdale. ‘Bulletproof Skin’
Sakura
Sakura didn’t like deluding herself.
He appeared to be alone and recovering from severe wounds, yet he was still a hundred times stronger than her. It was fine, though. She was no fool either.
She gestured for the company to stay put and walked out to meet him.
“Are you going to cry?” he asked wearily. There were feeble traces of a jest in the question, blurred by overwhelming tiredness.
She compressed her lips, her face hard as a mask.
“I’ve missed you,” she said simply. Telling the truth was never difficult for her. She still missed him and searched his face for any trace of the boy she had known.
“Why are you here?”
“To help Naruto.”
He blinked. “Who’s that?”
Sakura moved closer. He was not alone after all; a haggard-looking red-headed girl was crouching in the shadows as though waiting for an order.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
“Oh yeah? Then what’s with the flunkies?”
She resisted the urge to look around. She had told the rest of her squad to keep away, and they would, and it had never been done to deceive Sasuke; just to make sure that if she failed, the job would still be done.
“I pity the thing you have become,” she murmured. Pity was a poor kinsman of fear, a crippled parody of sorrow and a child of regret. She disgusted herself by feeling it so profoundly, but if she wanted to save him, she could not love him, should not love him.
He sighed quietly. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“Too bad,” she told him right before she attacked him. Blue chakra flamed around her balled fist.
She remembered-
He parried the blow sluggishly and pushed her away.
-A sunlit bench where she had almost kissed him. If she could find a giant rubber to erase each memory, she would finally be at peace.
Didn’t want to fight, he said. She delivered another blow. Hit the hardest, like Tsunade had schooled her. She thought about Tsunade briefly, lying comatose back home. Thought about the people who had been at fault. She could not be as forgiving as Naruto was. Sasuke had no cloak on at the moment but she could see the red clouds etched on his skin.
Didn’t want to fight. So he would start a war and plunge the world in darkness, but he would not fight her, the annoying one. He was still beating around the bush. He had always been so adamant about whom he wanted to kill. Wasn’t she on the list?
-She held him in her arms in the aftermath of Orochimaru’s bite. Back then, she had been the one to hold him, not Naruto. She held him when he was turning into a raging monster before her eyes, a pale ghost of what was happening now; and now she would not hold him, but she would drive a kunai into his artery to see all the bad blood run out.
“Fine,” he said. “Have it your way.”
He directed a Chidori current at her. She leapt aside, tried to hit him with an array of shuriken. From the corner of her eye, she tried to keep watch on the red-haired girl. She was no real fighter, it seemed. Must be the sensor from Sasuke’s team.
-She used to imagine what a real date between them would look like. She would make her best chocolate cookies (Mom’s recipe). They would sit on the moonlit roof, holding hands and looking at the sky. He would kiss her. She would promise she would always be there for him. He would smile. She shuddered to think how persevering these dreams were. He was but a shade in her memory for years, but sometimes she still longed for the taste of those imaginary nights.
He unsheathed his sword and brandished it with odd bravado. A knight in shining armour ready to vanquish the princess and unleash the dragon. Sakura snickered at the thought. He lunged into attack. The blade whooshed past her so swiftly she barely had time to duck and dodge the stroke. Her chest was tight as if emotions had clotted inside it and would not dissipate.
-Ino was crying. Sakura had never seen her crying out in the open like that. Vaguely, she wondered if it were about Sasuke. The memories of their fights over him had turned into vapid smoke. It used to feel like all nine of them were a single body, and with Sasuke defecting to the Akatsuki, something had broken inside it. Sakura smiled as she realized that she had been a fool: Sasuke had not been one of them for years. And the amputation hadn’t hurt all that much.
His eyes were lifeless. She landed into position, swung a kunai and brought it down on him. He responded with the blade. She thought she had him, but then, he just as surely had her. Dying with a loved one - and for a loved one - was not the worst kind of death; then again, she had never thought a double suicide was romantic.
It took her a moment to realize there was some impediment between them. Her kunai had pierced a shoulder. His sword was blocked by a hand.
A familiar flurry of black and orange tensed and pushed them apart. Sasuke jumped back and narrowly avoided collision with one of the shattered walls. The red-haired girl snapped her head up but stayed rooted to the spot.
“What are you doing here?” Sakura demanded breathlessly, the metal of her kunai tinted with the red of Naruto’s blood.
Naruto
Naruto could not delude himself any longer.
“Stopping this crazy shit,” he said without looking back at Sakura because he didn’t want to see the shade of Tsunade’s fierce determination in her. He carried a bit of Jiraiya in him, just like Sasuke carried a bit of Orochimaru whether he liked it or not.
Sakura tore past him and engaged in a new round against Sasuke. Naruto sprang up and broke them apart again, all their blows landing on him. He didn’t mind. They waltzed all over the ground, bouncing off the walls, each one of them taking on the other two. Naruto struggled to block Sakura’s attacks without hurting her, but she fought ferociously and it was getting tough for him to hold back. There was an air of gentle brokenness about them swaying like this together in a terrifying dance.
“I know the truth about your brother,” Naruto whispered in Sasuke’s ear.
The Sharingan flashes in Sasuke’s eyes.
Naruto remembered-
-When Ero-sennin was declared dead, the first thing Naruto felt was disbelief. A great man like him couldn’t have just gone. There was numbness and sorrow too. There was pain, as though another piece of Naruto’s heart had been brutally ripped out. There was determination and lust for vengeance that had raised its head like a beast slumbering inside him. Finally, there was understanding and later on, after the conversation with Nagato, acceptance.
Sakura’s blow crashed upon him. He was in Sage Mode, and the pain didn’t quite come through.
“I want you to know that I understand,” Naruto said.
Sasuke thrust the Kusanagi forward, aiming to strike him down. Naruto leapt up and hit him flat in the chest with his foot. Sasuke staggered backwards. Chidori chirped noisily in his hand. Flares of electricity skidded over the ground, deforming it further.
Naruto parried Sakura’s attack. She narrowed her eyes. Jolts of Chidori struck them both. Naruto turned his back on it to cover Sakura.
“I hurt you,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have dismissed your feelings like that.”
“What are you talking about? I’m the one who was hurting you. I’m like a bull in a china shop. Everywhere I turn, things break.”
“Please don’t do this.”
She flung a number of shuriken at Sasuke over Naruto’s shoulder.
“I have to. You never will.”
Sasuke turned a somersault above the two of them. His sword flashed behind Sakura and darted towards her back. Naruto pushed her aside in the blink of an eye. The blade entered his chest. Sakura cried out. With a quiet 'poof', the body disappeared, leaving a cracked slab of rock in its place. Naruto attempted to take in the rear, but Sasuke was faster. Another swift blow nailed Naruto to the stone wall, the Chidori-charged blade buried in his shoulder.
“How much do you think you know?” Sasuke asked.
-It felt totally improper that this sniggering bastard should save his life. Naruto held his body, punctured with needles, close and brimmed with anger at himself. Sasuke had died for him, and they had never even talked normally before. The sound of waves crashing against the pillars of the bridge was too loud.
“You told me I could never understand you because I had no family. You’re wrong. You’re my family, and I’ve seen you devoured by darkness. Ero-sennin was my family, and he was killed. Sakura-chan is my family, and she’s killing herself this very minute for you.”
Sasuke’s eyes widened a fraction. Naruto wondered if his words reached him.
Sakura’s hand, illuminated by a ball of chakra swirling around it, came down on Sasuke’s shoulder, numbing his arm. He shivered slightly. Neither of them hastened to move.
“I loved you,” Sakura whispered. “Don’t make me hate you.”
Sasuke’s eyes bled into another, unfamiliar pattern. Must be that crazy advanced Sharingan. Naruto’s throat tightened. So he was set on playing the game till the end.
“What did you do?” Sasuke asked. Naruto blinked, uncertain if the question was addressed to him or Sakura. “To the person who killed your sensei.”
“I forgave him.”
Sasuke snorted. It was such a strange, familiar sound from a long time ago that even Sakura seemed to be ill at ease.
“Never doubted you,” Sasuke said quietly.
-“Sasuke doesn’t even see you,” Gaara had said. “He longs only for his own darkness.”
Black fire encircled them. Blood welled up in Sasuke’s eye. Naruto reflected that Sasuke could probably barely see anything with that eye; or if he could, everything was red and hazy.
Naruto tossed Sakura outside the fire circle and engaged in a one-on-one battle with Sasuke. She tried to protest, but he moved so speedily he could hardly tell what she was saying.
-He remembered her smile and her joyful green eyes and her bright apple-scented hair bubbling down her back as she sat a few rows ahead of him in Iruka-sensei’s class. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and she thought he was a complete moron. She punched him in the face years later and then hugged him in front of the entire village. He could still smell the faint apple aroma beneath the dust that clung to her hair.
They rose above the flames, moving so swiftly that, even to their accelerated eyes, they both were momentary flashes colliding and diverging. Sasuke’s chakra was giving out; Naruto could feel it. He rammed his fist into Sasuke’s chest, dark satisfaction piercing his mind. A pair of shadow clones rose behind him, Rasenshuriken flaring in their grasp.
Black flames spiraled upwards. Rasenshuriken expanded, its glow flooding the world around them. Somewhere below, Sakura cried out. Naruto couldn’t make out the words. Rasenshuriken cut into the flames, sweeping them apart. Sasuke flickered in his rear and ran a Chidori current through his body.
Naruto lost his balance. With a strained groan, he collapsed on the ground. His Sage Mode was dangerously close to exhaustion.
Sakura was near him. He skewed his eyes up, just enough to see a lock of her hair falling over her eyes. He didn’t like it. This way, he couldn’t tell what she was planning.
Naruto produced more Kage Bunshin armed with smallish Rasengan spheres and saw them lunge at Sasuke. Sasuke repelled one, Chidori Nagashi flowing over his body; the other one damaged his defense, and he had to jump down too lest he should fall. His bleeding eye twitched. He looked like he was about to perform another jutsu, but his knees bucked. Naruto could barely feel him.
Sakura’s hand shot forth. A shuriken whooshed towards Sasuke, its sharp points digging into his flesh and sweeping over his skin. Blood gurgled in his throat. Naruto cried out as if it were him who had been hurt. Sasuke fell on his knees, pushed towards them and drove the sword through Sakura’s body. One flash; and the blade was out. She fell into Naruto’s arms, and Sasuke collapsed on the ground.
The dust began to settle.
Naruto brought his face closer to Sakura’s. She smiled at him. He thought that he wouldn’t survive losing them both.
The red-haired girl who had been watching from a niche ran up to Sasuke and lowered herself next to him. She rolled up her sleeve, exposing her forearm covered in what looked like multiple bitemarks. She brought it down to Sasuke’s face, but he grasped her wrist and whispered in a harsh, dank voice:
“Her. Her first.”
Naruto thought he might have misheard, but the girl, no less taken aback than he was, turned to Sakura.
“I can help,” she told neither her, nor Naruto in particular.
Naruto let Sakura go and crawled over to Sasuke. The redhead positioned herself over Sakura, lowered her arm and ordered Sakura to bite. Naruto looked away.
-“You have become my best friend,” Sasuke had said. A different Sasuke. Angry, broken, yes; but not the cold, lifeless one that was lying before him now.
Naruto leaned into him and pressed his forehead to Sasuke’s. His skin was covered in perspiration, but felt cool to the touch. Naruto shut his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.
“Look into my eyes,” he said in a barely audible voice and locked his gaze with Sasuke’s.
Sasuke
Sasuke excelled at deluding himself.
There had always been things he would have been willing to trust more than reality. Back when he was a child, he believed in his brother and the pride of his clan. As a teenager, he believed that killing his brother would bring him peace. Having achieved that, he started believing that avenging his brother’s death would free him from guilt over his terrible mistake. Perhaps he simply needed something to believe in.
Sasuke looked into the strange froglike eyes that overshadowed everything else above him. He had almost forgotten the eyes belonged to Naruto. Naruto’s breath ghosted over his face.
He wondered what he was supposed to see.
He remembered-
-The moron drove a kunai into his hand. Big words; there had never been anything else about Naruto but big words. But it didn’t take Sasuke too long to realize there was determination behind these words.
Naruto’s usual electric blue seeped through the yellow of his irises. Scarlet shades around the eyes faded. Sasuke saw his own reflection in Naruto’s pupils. He looked tired, almost dead. His throat stung.
The blue paled, giving way to strangely familiar crimson. Black tomoe seals swirled in its depths, like black shells below the water column. Sasuke held his breath.
-There was an old man in the Uchiha clan whose house was located near Fugaku’s residence. He played pipe every sunset. Sasuke used to listen with his eyes closed and his forehead pressed against the pillar of the gate. Smoke curled over the sloping roof of the old man’s house.
Sasuke heard a voice. Soft whispers in his mind telling him he didn’t need it. Didn’t have to bear the pain alone anymore.
Something soft slid into his palm. Naruto pulled away.
-When he was a kid, he saw a movie about a group of pioneers discovering some unexplored lands. He dreamt of sleeping at the bottom of a boat, soothed by the splashing of the waves around him. He asked Itachi if they could ever go exploring together. Itachi glanced down at him, paused and then said, “Yes.”
Sasuke knew he had lied.
Sakura groaned quietly. Sasuke saw her getting closer. Perhaps she would take another chance to finish him off. He remembered the plate with apple slices he had knocked out of her hand three years ago. It was foolish.
Sakura summoned a little chakra and placed her hand on his chest. He could hear Karin breathing heavily. She remained unnaturally quiet, nothing like she should have been.
Sakura’s hand radiated gentle warmth. Sasuke’s eyelids drooped shut. Chocolate makes you happy, Itachi used to say. Sasuke hated sweets, but right now he wanted to taste something sweet in his mouth. He wanted to feel something other than pain and fury.
It got easier to breathe.
Sasuke opened his fist and looked at the tiny crow feather lying on his palm.
“We have something to talk about,” Naruto said. His eyes were back to blue.
“Yes…” Sasuke felt really sleepy. In the back of his mind, he recalled Suigetsu and Juugo and realized he knew nothing of their whereabouts. He glanced at Karin who sat motionless, staring nowhere in particular. She must be very lonely. “You need to explain this,” Sasuke muttered, lifting his palm a little. The feather did not stir.
Naruto nodded. “I will. But if you wanna hear the story, you’ll have to stay.”
Sasuke attempted a smirk. Weariness washed over him like an ocean; he was sinking to the bottom of it. Naruto’s hand covered his. Sakura reached out hesitantly but didn’t touch him.
“I will… for now.”
He closed his eyes. As he fell asleep, he thought he should very much like to wake up later on.
December 7, 2009
Offtopic: HUGE THANKS to everyone who sent me virtual gifts!!! That's so sweet of you guys! <3
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura - together and alone. The final battle is on. [Team 7; SPOILERS up to Chapter 474]
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.
A/N: This is, uh… my reaction to the latest chapters. Probably. Or just a random surge of activity.
THE SHORTER STORY
To lose you is to never love again.
Institute feat. Gavin Rossdale. ‘Bulletproof Skin’
Sakura
Sakura didn’t like deluding herself.
He appeared to be alone and recovering from severe wounds, yet he was still a hundred times stronger than her. It was fine, though. She was no fool either.
She gestured for the company to stay put and walked out to meet him.
“Are you going to cry?” he asked wearily. There were feeble traces of a jest in the question, blurred by overwhelming tiredness.
She compressed her lips, her face hard as a mask.
“I’ve missed you,” she said simply. Telling the truth was never difficult for her. She still missed him and searched his face for any trace of the boy she had known.
“Why are you here?”
“To help Naruto.”
He blinked. “Who’s that?”
Sakura moved closer. He was not alone after all; a haggard-looking red-headed girl was crouching in the shadows as though waiting for an order.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
“Oh yeah? Then what’s with the flunkies?”
She resisted the urge to look around. She had told the rest of her squad to keep away, and they would, and it had never been done to deceive Sasuke; just to make sure that if she failed, the job would still be done.
“I pity the thing you have become,” she murmured. Pity was a poor kinsman of fear, a crippled parody of sorrow and a child of regret. She disgusted herself by feeling it so profoundly, but if she wanted to save him, she could not love him, should not love him.
He sighed quietly. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“Too bad,” she told him right before she attacked him. Blue chakra flamed around her balled fist.
She remembered-
He parried the blow sluggishly and pushed her away.
-A sunlit bench where she had almost kissed him. If she could find a giant rubber to erase each memory, she would finally be at peace.
Didn’t want to fight, he said. She delivered another blow. Hit the hardest, like Tsunade had schooled her. She thought about Tsunade briefly, lying comatose back home. Thought about the people who had been at fault. She could not be as forgiving as Naruto was. Sasuke had no cloak on at the moment but she could see the red clouds etched on his skin.
Didn’t want to fight. So he would start a war and plunge the world in darkness, but he would not fight her, the annoying one. He was still beating around the bush. He had always been so adamant about whom he wanted to kill. Wasn’t she on the list?
-She held him in her arms in the aftermath of Orochimaru’s bite. Back then, she had been the one to hold him, not Naruto. She held him when he was turning into a raging monster before her eyes, a pale ghost of what was happening now; and now she would not hold him, but she would drive a kunai into his artery to see all the bad blood run out.
“Fine,” he said. “Have it your way.”
He directed a Chidori current at her. She leapt aside, tried to hit him with an array of shuriken. From the corner of her eye, she tried to keep watch on the red-haired girl. She was no real fighter, it seemed. Must be the sensor from Sasuke’s team.
-She used to imagine what a real date between them would look like. She would make her best chocolate cookies (Mom’s recipe). They would sit on the moonlit roof, holding hands and looking at the sky. He would kiss her. She would promise she would always be there for him. He would smile. She shuddered to think how persevering these dreams were. He was but a shade in her memory for years, but sometimes she still longed for the taste of those imaginary nights.
He unsheathed his sword and brandished it with odd bravado. A knight in shining armour ready to vanquish the princess and unleash the dragon. Sakura snickered at the thought. He lunged into attack. The blade whooshed past her so swiftly she barely had time to duck and dodge the stroke. Her chest was tight as if emotions had clotted inside it and would not dissipate.
-Ino was crying. Sakura had never seen her crying out in the open like that. Vaguely, she wondered if it were about Sasuke. The memories of their fights over him had turned into vapid smoke. It used to feel like all nine of them were a single body, and with Sasuke defecting to the Akatsuki, something had broken inside it. Sakura smiled as she realized that she had been a fool: Sasuke had not been one of them for years. And the amputation hadn’t hurt all that much.
His eyes were lifeless. She landed into position, swung a kunai and brought it down on him. He responded with the blade. She thought she had him, but then, he just as surely had her. Dying with a loved one - and for a loved one - was not the worst kind of death; then again, she had never thought a double suicide was romantic.
It took her a moment to realize there was some impediment between them. Her kunai had pierced a shoulder. His sword was blocked by a hand.
A familiar flurry of black and orange tensed and pushed them apart. Sasuke jumped back and narrowly avoided collision with one of the shattered walls. The red-haired girl snapped her head up but stayed rooted to the spot.
“What are you doing here?” Sakura demanded breathlessly, the metal of her kunai tinted with the red of Naruto’s blood.
Naruto
Naruto could not delude himself any longer.
“Stopping this crazy shit,” he said without looking back at Sakura because he didn’t want to see the shade of Tsunade’s fierce determination in her. He carried a bit of Jiraiya in him, just like Sasuke carried a bit of Orochimaru whether he liked it or not.
Sakura tore past him and engaged in a new round against Sasuke. Naruto sprang up and broke them apart again, all their blows landing on him. He didn’t mind. They waltzed all over the ground, bouncing off the walls, each one of them taking on the other two. Naruto struggled to block Sakura’s attacks without hurting her, but she fought ferociously and it was getting tough for him to hold back. There was an air of gentle brokenness about them swaying like this together in a terrifying dance.
“I know the truth about your brother,” Naruto whispered in Sasuke’s ear.
The Sharingan flashes in Sasuke’s eyes.
Naruto remembered-
-When Ero-sennin was declared dead, the first thing Naruto felt was disbelief. A great man like him couldn’t have just gone. There was numbness and sorrow too. There was pain, as though another piece of Naruto’s heart had been brutally ripped out. There was determination and lust for vengeance that had raised its head like a beast slumbering inside him. Finally, there was understanding and later on, after the conversation with Nagato, acceptance.
Sakura’s blow crashed upon him. He was in Sage Mode, and the pain didn’t quite come through.
“I want you to know that I understand,” Naruto said.
Sasuke thrust the Kusanagi forward, aiming to strike him down. Naruto leapt up and hit him flat in the chest with his foot. Sasuke staggered backwards. Chidori chirped noisily in his hand. Flares of electricity skidded over the ground, deforming it further.
Naruto parried Sakura’s attack. She narrowed her eyes. Jolts of Chidori struck them both. Naruto turned his back on it to cover Sakura.
“I hurt you,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have dismissed your feelings like that.”
“What are you talking about? I’m the one who was hurting you. I’m like a bull in a china shop. Everywhere I turn, things break.”
“Please don’t do this.”
She flung a number of shuriken at Sasuke over Naruto’s shoulder.
“I have to. You never will.”
Sasuke turned a somersault above the two of them. His sword flashed behind Sakura and darted towards her back. Naruto pushed her aside in the blink of an eye. The blade entered his chest. Sakura cried out. With a quiet 'poof', the body disappeared, leaving a cracked slab of rock in its place. Naruto attempted to take in the rear, but Sasuke was faster. Another swift blow nailed Naruto to the stone wall, the Chidori-charged blade buried in his shoulder.
“How much do you think you know?” Sasuke asked.
-It felt totally improper that this sniggering bastard should save his life. Naruto held his body, punctured with needles, close and brimmed with anger at himself. Sasuke had died for him, and they had never even talked normally before. The sound of waves crashing against the pillars of the bridge was too loud.
“You told me I could never understand you because I had no family. You’re wrong. You’re my family, and I’ve seen you devoured by darkness. Ero-sennin was my family, and he was killed. Sakura-chan is my family, and she’s killing herself this very minute for you.”
Sasuke’s eyes widened a fraction. Naruto wondered if his words reached him.
Sakura’s hand, illuminated by a ball of chakra swirling around it, came down on Sasuke’s shoulder, numbing his arm. He shivered slightly. Neither of them hastened to move.
“I loved you,” Sakura whispered. “Don’t make me hate you.”
Sasuke’s eyes bled into another, unfamiliar pattern. Must be that crazy advanced Sharingan. Naruto’s throat tightened. So he was set on playing the game till the end.
“What did you do?” Sasuke asked. Naruto blinked, uncertain if the question was addressed to him or Sakura. “To the person who killed your sensei.”
“I forgave him.”
Sasuke snorted. It was such a strange, familiar sound from a long time ago that even Sakura seemed to be ill at ease.
“Never doubted you,” Sasuke said quietly.
-“Sasuke doesn’t even see you,” Gaara had said. “He longs only for his own darkness.”
Black fire encircled them. Blood welled up in Sasuke’s eye. Naruto reflected that Sasuke could probably barely see anything with that eye; or if he could, everything was red and hazy.
Naruto tossed Sakura outside the fire circle and engaged in a one-on-one battle with Sasuke. She tried to protest, but he moved so speedily he could hardly tell what she was saying.
-He remembered her smile and her joyful green eyes and her bright apple-scented hair bubbling down her back as she sat a few rows ahead of him in Iruka-sensei’s class. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and she thought he was a complete moron. She punched him in the face years later and then hugged him in front of the entire village. He could still smell the faint apple aroma beneath the dust that clung to her hair.
They rose above the flames, moving so swiftly that, even to their accelerated eyes, they both were momentary flashes colliding and diverging. Sasuke’s chakra was giving out; Naruto could feel it. He rammed his fist into Sasuke’s chest, dark satisfaction piercing his mind. A pair of shadow clones rose behind him, Rasenshuriken flaring in their grasp.
Black flames spiraled upwards. Rasenshuriken expanded, its glow flooding the world around them. Somewhere below, Sakura cried out. Naruto couldn’t make out the words. Rasenshuriken cut into the flames, sweeping them apart. Sasuke flickered in his rear and ran a Chidori current through his body.
Naruto lost his balance. With a strained groan, he collapsed on the ground. His Sage Mode was dangerously close to exhaustion.
Sakura was near him. He skewed his eyes up, just enough to see a lock of her hair falling over her eyes. He didn’t like it. This way, he couldn’t tell what she was planning.
Naruto produced more Kage Bunshin armed with smallish Rasengan spheres and saw them lunge at Sasuke. Sasuke repelled one, Chidori Nagashi flowing over his body; the other one damaged his defense, and he had to jump down too lest he should fall. His bleeding eye twitched. He looked like he was about to perform another jutsu, but his knees bucked. Naruto could barely feel him.
Sakura’s hand shot forth. A shuriken whooshed towards Sasuke, its sharp points digging into his flesh and sweeping over his skin. Blood gurgled in his throat. Naruto cried out as if it were him who had been hurt. Sasuke fell on his knees, pushed towards them and drove the sword through Sakura’s body. One flash; and the blade was out. She fell into Naruto’s arms, and Sasuke collapsed on the ground.
The dust began to settle.
Naruto brought his face closer to Sakura’s. She smiled at him. He thought that he wouldn’t survive losing them both.
The red-haired girl who had been watching from a niche ran up to Sasuke and lowered herself next to him. She rolled up her sleeve, exposing her forearm covered in what looked like multiple bitemarks. She brought it down to Sasuke’s face, but he grasped her wrist and whispered in a harsh, dank voice:
“Her. Her first.”
Naruto thought he might have misheard, but the girl, no less taken aback than he was, turned to Sakura.
“I can help,” she told neither her, nor Naruto in particular.
Naruto let Sakura go and crawled over to Sasuke. The redhead positioned herself over Sakura, lowered her arm and ordered Sakura to bite. Naruto looked away.
-“You have become my best friend,” Sasuke had said. A different Sasuke. Angry, broken, yes; but not the cold, lifeless one that was lying before him now.
Naruto leaned into him and pressed his forehead to Sasuke’s. His skin was covered in perspiration, but felt cool to the touch. Naruto shut his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.
“Look into my eyes,” he said in a barely audible voice and locked his gaze with Sasuke’s.
Sasuke
Sasuke excelled at deluding himself.
There had always been things he would have been willing to trust more than reality. Back when he was a child, he believed in his brother and the pride of his clan. As a teenager, he believed that killing his brother would bring him peace. Having achieved that, he started believing that avenging his brother’s death would free him from guilt over his terrible mistake. Perhaps he simply needed something to believe in.
Sasuke looked into the strange froglike eyes that overshadowed everything else above him. He had almost forgotten the eyes belonged to Naruto. Naruto’s breath ghosted over his face.
He wondered what he was supposed to see.
He remembered-
-The moron drove a kunai into his hand. Big words; there had never been anything else about Naruto but big words. But it didn’t take Sasuke too long to realize there was determination behind these words.
Naruto’s usual electric blue seeped through the yellow of his irises. Scarlet shades around the eyes faded. Sasuke saw his own reflection in Naruto’s pupils. He looked tired, almost dead. His throat stung.
The blue paled, giving way to strangely familiar crimson. Black tomoe seals swirled in its depths, like black shells below the water column. Sasuke held his breath.
-There was an old man in the Uchiha clan whose house was located near Fugaku’s residence. He played pipe every sunset. Sasuke used to listen with his eyes closed and his forehead pressed against the pillar of the gate. Smoke curled over the sloping roof of the old man’s house.
Sasuke heard a voice. Soft whispers in his mind telling him he didn’t need it. Didn’t have to bear the pain alone anymore.
Something soft slid into his palm. Naruto pulled away.
-When he was a kid, he saw a movie about a group of pioneers discovering some unexplored lands. He dreamt of sleeping at the bottom of a boat, soothed by the splashing of the waves around him. He asked Itachi if they could ever go exploring together. Itachi glanced down at him, paused and then said, “Yes.”
Sasuke knew he had lied.
Sakura groaned quietly. Sasuke saw her getting closer. Perhaps she would take another chance to finish him off. He remembered the plate with apple slices he had knocked out of her hand three years ago. It was foolish.
Sakura summoned a little chakra and placed her hand on his chest. He could hear Karin breathing heavily. She remained unnaturally quiet, nothing like she should have been.
Sakura’s hand radiated gentle warmth. Sasuke’s eyelids drooped shut. Chocolate makes you happy, Itachi used to say. Sasuke hated sweets, but right now he wanted to taste something sweet in his mouth. He wanted to feel something other than pain and fury.
It got easier to breathe.
Sasuke opened his fist and looked at the tiny crow feather lying on his palm.
“We have something to talk about,” Naruto said. His eyes were back to blue.
“Yes…” Sasuke felt really sleepy. In the back of his mind, he recalled Suigetsu and Juugo and realized he knew nothing of their whereabouts. He glanced at Karin who sat motionless, staring nowhere in particular. She must be very lonely. “You need to explain this,” Sasuke muttered, lifting his palm a little. The feather did not stir.
Naruto nodded. “I will. But if you wanna hear the story, you’ll have to stay.”
Sasuke attempted a smirk. Weariness washed over him like an ocean; he was sinking to the bottom of it. Naruto’s hand covered his. Sakura reached out hesitantly but didn’t touch him.
“I will… for now.”
He closed his eyes. As he fell asleep, he thought he should very much like to wake up later on.
December 7, 2009
Offtopic: HUGE THANKS to everyone who sent me virtual gifts!!! That's so sweet of you guys! <3